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Guyana consistently achieves 90 percent vaccination coverage over five year period – Health Minister
Guyana has consistently achieved over 90 percent coverage of vaccination of children for routine preventable childhood diseases for the past five years, according to Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran.
Dr Ramsaran said Guyana once again received an International award for its consistency in achieving vaccination coverage consecutively for the past five years. 
“We received in two previous years two other prestigious awards in consecutive years… We have practically eradicated some potentially fatal childhood diseases due to the aggressive and country wide access to routine vaccines,” Ramsaran explained.
Adding that the Ministry of Health on 11th January, 2012 introduced after a protracted period of sensitization and education work on the vaccine against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), Ramsaran said this will protect girls from cervical cancer as they mature later in life.
Stressing that cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths among Guyanese women; Ramsaran said the Health Ministry has placed Maternal and Child Health on the front burner.
Dr. Ramsaran said that the vaccines were dispatched to various Regions. When completed over 6,000 girls will be recipients. He asserted the girls who received the vaccines at the launching of the programme are healthy. There were no reports of ‘so-called’ minor side effects like pains, which happen with any vaccination.
The programme, which targets mainly females between the ages of 11 and 13 years, has been met with resistance by several women, who have requested the Ministry to terminate the campaign until the population is furnished with adequate information on the side effects of the Gardasil vaccine. However, the vaccination has been continuous.
Health reports reveal that Gardasil was only studied for about five years before it was licensed and nobody knows how potentially ineffective this poorly studied vaccine will turn out to be – especially if the four HPV strains in the vaccine are replaced by one or two of the many HPV strains that are not contained in the vaccine.
However, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention noted that HPV vaccines are given as three shots to protect against HPV infection and HPV-related diseases; two vaccines, cervarix and gardasil, have been shown to protect against most cervical cancers in women.
HPV vaccines offer the greatest health benefits to individuals who receive all three doses before having any type of sexual activity. That is why HPV vaccination is recommended for preteen girls and boys at age 11 or 12 years. HPV vaccines are recommended for all teen girls and women through age 26, who did not get all three doses of the vaccine when they were younger.
This programme is also part of the PAHO/WHO regional initiative for the reduction of cervical cancers. The vaccine is currently being implemented in 33 countries, in all the continents around the world.
Dr Ramsaran noted that the vaccine will not only help prevent cervical cancer, but genital warts as well as. The Minister explained that the reason for administering the vaccine to children at a young age, or before their first sexual encounter, is because 80 per cent of the world’s population is at some time exposed to HPV.
“Quietly we are successfully working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs.)…In this regard I noted with great satisfaction the 100% passes in two of the three Nursing Schools operated by the Health Ministry at the recently concluded Midwifery examinations. These are the Georgetown and the Linden Schools of Nursing. These recently graduated Mid-wives have already been re-deployed to the various regions to strengthen the Ministry of Health “SAFE MOTHERHOOD” thrust. This will ensure that close to over 90% of births will be delivered by a trained birth attendant,” Ramsaran explained.
He added that the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) recently commissioned a 10 unit Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to provide care to neonates needing special care – such as the premature neonates, those with extremely low birth weight and those born of high risk pregnancies.
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